Praying Small

And all of this, all of these are the mere edges of His capabilities.
        We are privy to only a whisper of His power.
        Who then dares to claim understanding of His thunderous might? Job 26:14 (VOICE)

Not too long ago I spent an evening in the Emergency Room which led to a stint in the Intensive Care Unit. I was then moved to a hospital room and finally, discharge. When I left, I received instructions to follow up with a specialist. I did. During that visit she said, “This could be as easy as a quick procedure and the problem will be gone but I won’t know until we do more tests.”

So, I went home and started praying for the “quick fix procedure.” As I prayed (and asked other people to pray), I realized I was being short-sighted. Why was I praying this little, tiny prayer when God could do so much more? Why was I limiting the God of the Universe like that? What would make me pray so small?

As I pondered this, I realize that I (we) do this all the time. We pray small. We limit God with our human size thinking. Really, no one can actually limit God but we minimize who he is. We minimize his power and his answers by only looking for him in small ways.

God is so much bigger than we can think. He is so much more powerful than we can imagine.

So, I started praying for complete healing. And there it was, maybe this was the reason we don’t pray big. Maybe we pray small because we are afraid God won’t come through in a big way. What if he doesn’t answer our big, audacious prayers? Does that make him less capable; less caring? Nope. It just means that is not the way he decided to answer.

He didn’t answer my prayer for complete healing. There is more to this journey. But I’m OK with the answer. I’m OK with it because I know, and the Bible says, that there is nothing God won’t do for my good. There is no place he won’t go to save me. Sure, I don’t like this journey so much but I do trust the God that is leading. And because of that, I am going to pray really, big audacious prayers from now on! No little, wimpy prayers for me. I’m claiming the power that I don’t really understand. Nothing is impossible with God.

What Happened To The Giants?

So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.” Deuteronomy 31:6 (NLT)

I am in a season right now where I am privileged to spend some extra time with my oldest grandson. The conversations we are having are amazing. They make me think about God a lot. The other day, we had this one.

Him: Yiayia, there are giants in my bedroom.
Me: There are? Where did they come from?
Him: Come see, Yiayia.
As we approached his room he turns to me and says “Hold me.” So I picked him up as we walked into the room.
Me: Where are they? He scoots down and stands in front of me.
Him: There are no giants in my bedroom. Let’s go play.

Made me think about our giants. We think we see them. We are sure they are there and sometimes they really are. Just like the Israelites when they ventured into the land of Canaan. They really did see giants. Unfortunately, that is all they saw. They didn’t see God standing there with them. They didn’t see the power and the strength that is so readily available to God’s children.

All we have to do is ask God to “Hold us” and he will walk with us. We never venture into the land of giants without him. As a matter of fact, we never venture anywhere without him.

Next time you are sure you see giants, grab hold of God and keep walking. He’s right there holding and fighting for you. Our God is bigger than any Giant.